


turn your face to the sun

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(500) days of Steven. Or, well, of Liverpool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn your face to the sun

Xabi Alonso keeps lists. Not the usual kind. He's still proud enough to go to the supermarket without one, to start putting together a meal without consulting a recipe. He keeps lists of important things, because important things are sometimes forgotten too easily. He keeps them all in his head, tucked safely away, hidden and precious. Because memories are, really.

He has childhood memories that no photographs can do justice to; his earliest memories - of course they're scattered and unclear, unfixed in time and place, but he treasures the images, the snapshots that appropriately might have been taken by a child. By him as a child.

There are The Important Days. His mind puts them in orders he tries to reshuffle without success. There really shouldn't be a hierarchy to that sort of thing - they're all important, but they mean different things to him. They make him feel different things, sometimes only slight (but significant) variations of one particular thing.

There are people, and places, and matches, and goals, and moments - painful ones and wonderful ones. Sometimes, they kind of coincide; they overlap in ways he didn't expect.

 

 _1\. the first day, out by the water, feeling the wind through your hair and on your skin for the first time, almost tasting something on it, something fresh and ancient all at once._

 

He doesn't miss it the most; it's just a memory, the first one, the first impression he had had of the place.

It was a good one, he thinks. Yes, it was. They'd started off on the right foot, Liverpool and him.

 

 _124\. trying to walk off a broken ankle, because you could feel almost superhuman out there. and you never want to disappoint._

 

It's kind of surreal, watching from afar five years later as they slip further and further down the table. He sends good luck messages before games, and starts typing, _sorry. i'm sorry_ , afterwards, but it feels wrong. He's not sure what he's apologising for anymore. He deletes it.

 

 _994\. athens. it's as pretty as istanbul for a while, prettier maybe. there's something tainted about the city after, though. it's like a bitter taste you can't get out of your mouth for days. until it becomes familiar. you kind of miss it after it's gone. it's kind of shameful, kind of wrong, like a runners-up medal. you appreciate it after, the city, the people, the hope that flickered before it was unceremoniously blown out. the bittersweet applause, italian-accented snippets of 'you'll never walk alone.' and you didn't._

 

Madrid is a lot of things. It's simple and confusing at the same time. It's like a story someone told him once, about somewhere far away. Somewhere far away that still succeeded in being the centre. The centre of dreams and this particular world they live in. He's won at the Bernabeu, and it felt like something being broken, something big crashing down, the core of the earth being cracked. It's kind of unsettling even under the victory.

It remains like that for a while. Just a story. A story he doesn't feel he'll ever really be a part of.

 

 _1635\. red. what it meant: not just the colour of a shirt but tearing your chest open, spilling your lifeblood. and leaving everything else just as wrecked and shattered and bloody. it's always starker against white._

 

Summer ends, and the season begins, and of course it's strange, waking up in a new bed after five years, the sun playing across his face in an unfamiliar pattern, those few moments of disorientation before a proper consciousness takes over.

He wonders if it would feel the same if he'd go back, now, to his parents' house. Go back home.

Home means something else now, though. It's meant something else for a while.

December rolls around too fast, and Nagore says she misses the cold air.

 

 _98\. the snow at melwood. melting ice. the way everything smelled cleaner afterwards. newer, like it was a completely different place emerging. like it was starting over._

 

(1902.) It's stupid. It's reckless, impulsive, everything they've tried not to be. Maybe it shouldn't change now, now that he's living in another fucking country. They hadn't talked about that, though. Maybe, in hindsight, they'd never actually talked that much. Not about this.

Stevie doesn't say anything.

His body's still familiar, but it seems like he's pulling away at the same time. Like he's not really there. It's like he doesn't want to give too much of himself. Because he's given enough. And all he's gotten recently is frustration and bitterness. He doesn't deserve any of it. He thinks he may have said it (may have said _sorry_ ) and forgotten; may have said it without Stevie hearing. Afterwards, he thinks, _I don't want to be a part of your sadness. I couldn't bear it_ , and presses a kiss to his collarbone. Stevie rests a hand in his hair, and they don't move for a while.

It's raining when he leaves. He leans his head against the plane window and thinks about the first time.

The sunlight hurts his eyes when he lands in Madrid.

 

 _247\. after chelsea. steven's body against yours, feet not touching the ground, feeling younger than you'd ever felt before. thinking maybe you'd already won, you'd already won something more important._

 _the morning after, slightly hungover, his body a different kind of weight next to yours, turning into his touch._

 

(1908.) A week later, they win. Xabi feels like getting drunk but he has a match in the morning. Xabi can picture him, standing outside a bar, speaking too loudly because of the music still echoing in his ears and the alcohol and the adrenaline. He remembers being on the opposite side of this call.

 

( _229\. pacing in a hotel room in italy, biting your lip to keep from smiling, trying to keep your voice even, thinking about steven clutching an empty beer bottle tightly to stop his hands shaking._ )

 

"I wish you were here," he says, and then laughs, kind of embarrassed. He sounds so young again, like he's talking to someone else, or like he wants to be. Like he wants to be talking to the Xabi from five years ago, who was naive and too polite, who would agree with every stupid thing he said when he was drunk and who would drive him home, who kind of hero-worshipped him and kind of was in love with him. Secretly, or not so much, after a while.

But that person's gone. Stevie's still exactly the same, though; it kind of breaks his heart. It kind of makes him love him even more than he did then.

"The lads miss you," he's saying. "I, uh, I miss you."

He kind of wants to say, _No, you don't. You can't. Everything will be great again._ Because he believes it. He believes it, because it's what Stevie taught him to do. It's what the entire place taught him.

"I'll - I'll see you soon, Steven." And it's not a promise, not that kind. It's not a secret. It's not about pretending they can go back to better times for a minute or two. It's not about thinking he can find forgiveness or understanding or whatever he's looking for from him. Because it's not _his_ he's looking for, after all.

He's already had that for a long while.

They don't talk for a while after.

 

 _55\. the way they spoke. age-old and unapologetic. old mantras repeated with a renewed vigour. the passion. the history. the blood, sweat, tears soaked into every bit of earth._

 

(2112.) They don't win the league. Stevie sends, _tough luck_ , to him, and he kind of stares at it for a while. He wonders if he's angry, angry that Xabi didn't call, before (seventh, _seventh_ , and it feels so strange; it feels out of place, out of any context he knows, like a snapshot of someone else's life), or angry that it's all gone to hell, or angry that _this is what they are now_ , or angry that he doesn't know what to say, just like Xabi doesn't know what to say. Just like before, when he left.

 

 _1814\. saying goodbye. standing cheek to cheek for a second but feeling like his body was already a million miles away. he turns away before you do._

 

(2052.) He goes back to Melwood one day in April, knows exactly where to stand so the sun's not in his eyes, goes through the paces in his head while the team does. It's hard, when something so familiar goes on without you. It's like you could maybe fit right back into this old life, if you tried, but it still won't ever be the same.

He's sitting on the bench directly in front of Stevie's locker. Everyone else has already left, with Stevie staying behind to talk to the coaches.

He looks only slightly surprised when he walks in.

"Hey, how did you get in here?"

"I know people." Xabi smiles.

"Didn't think you were the type to exploit connections," Stevie replies, sitting down next to him.

"I'm not. If I was, you would know."

Stevie raises his eyebrows and Xabi just grins some more. But he gets serious a moment later.

"Nothing ever stays still, does it?"

"No, mate. It's just full speed ahead. No matter who gets left behind."

They're just silent for a moment, staring at the row of lockers, just breathing, as if to make an exception to the rule, to invalidate what they just said.

"Hey," Stevie says, voice sounding kind of husky. "Want to go for a drink or something?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'd like that."

"Okay. I'll meet you outside in ten?"

"Yeah."

Stevie heads for the showers. Xabi doesn't leave for a while.

 

They're sitting across from each other in the bar when Stevie says it.

"What do you miss most?"

"There are too many things, Steven. You know that."

 

 _3\. his face, the creases in his cheeks when he smiled, the premature wrinkles you wanted to smooth away the first day you met. the way he looked like he was always on the cusp of greatness. and, so, made you feel that way too._

 

 _266\. his lips, they tasted like victory._


End file.
